Apple mini tablet mounts a 7.9-in LED-backlit IPS LCD display with a resolution of 768 x 1024 pixels at a meager 162-ppi. The device drops the much-wanted Retina display and has lost a significant amount of sheen due to this. Kindle Fire HD is a bit larger with an 8.9-inch high definition display. It is an IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen that sports a better screen resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels at 254-ppi. The Nook HD+ is almost identical to Fire HD, but is rather smarter with a 9-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1920 x 1280 pixels at 256-ppi. Going by innards, the Mini comes with 1GHz dual core Cortex-A9 CPU with Apple’s new A5 chip inside. Its performance is boosted by a PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU and 512MB RAM. You can find 16GB, 32GB and 64GB variants of this machine. Onboard the new Kindle Fire HD, Amazon has integrated a 1.5GHz Cortex-A9 CPU with TI OMAP 4470 chip and 1GB of RAM. The device has two – 16GB and 32GB – memory versions. Nook HD+ is powered by the same setup, but it comes in 16GB only.

You have to realize the Ipad Mini is nothing like the Ipad 2 right? Its not got most of the "Bells and whistles" as the full size Ipads. The kindle/nexus you are getting a larger DPI display with (on the nexus) a fully customization OS. Like 3870x2 said, it all depends on which person you are. There are Mac people and there are Android people.

Right now the kindle is completely butchered to it "Amazon" Android OS but root has already been achieved and if they can somehow unlock the bootloader for a good recovery then the ROM junkies will come to play and thats when I believe sales of the fire will skyrocket.

The inbuilt speakers are better on the iPad and its design is "more pleasing" to the eye.

However, the Nexus has a superior screen (currently, iPad lacks "Retina"), the marketplace is better without any doubt and its very user-orientated in the respect you can pretty much make it do what you want and customise it to your desires... one thing the Apple products seriously lack.

My vote goes to the Nexus 7.... BUT, if you can hold out, do so. It'll be cheaper in a very short time, mainly due to holiday sales but partly due to other tablets coming out soon.